Salman Taseer
I read with great sadness today that Salman Taseer has been shot dead. Salman Taseer was the Governor of the Punjab region of Pakistan. He was shot by his own bodyguard with a sub-machine-gun. The reason? He was an outspoken critic of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.* Those of us in the relative security of Western democracies sometimes don’t fully appreciate the bravery and committment needed to speak-out in other parts of the world. This is a timely reminder and I hope that people will use this occasion to reflect for a few minutes on this.
I do not like to reduce debates to heroes and villains because that always involves massive oversimplifications but I do think that Taseer was a brave man speaking truth to power – which is as good an epitaph as I think anyone can reasonably ask for.
* Any0ne convicted of blasphemy against Islam, in Pakistan, faces the death penalty. 1274 people have been charged under these laws since 1968. The very fact of being charged is often a death sentence – nobody has been executed under the provisions of the law but a large number of people charged are killed by vigilantes before they ever get to court.
